


The Turing Test

by kirael



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 11:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10875555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirael/pseuds/kirael
Summary: Perry rarely has a vacation day.(Musings on the body vs the self, the comfort of routine, and language.)





	The Turing Test

**Author's Note:**

> it's just as pretentious as it sounds

The weirdest thing was that Doofenshmirtz sometimes genuinely seemed to forget that Perry was an animal. For all his almost comical exclamations of “Perry the Platypus,” the word “platypus” was increasingly becoming more and more of an afterthought, less of a designation and more of a mere moniker.

Perry understood. With Doofenshmirtz, he would always be a secret agent first and foremost and a platypus second. He was glad he had the Flynn-Fletchers to ground him; he was sure he’d lose track of who he was otherwise. Oddly enough, it was that strict division between his lives that kept him sane: pet, secret agent, and nemesis. The few times they’d intertwined – well, he still shuddered every time he thought about the second dimension.

But Perry thought himself very good at compartmentalization.

It had been a slow morning so far.

Perry lay on his belly, curled up on Phineas’s lap, his eyes closed as Phineas absent-mindedly pet him. He was only half-listening to Phineas talk to Ferb about what they were doing today – something about climbing trees.

“C’mon, Ferb!” Phineas yelled, jumping up and running to the backyard, jostling Perry from his relaxation. Phineas held Perry under one arm as they slipped out into the sunshine, setting Perry down under the tree as he produced a blueprint and started making calls.

Perry struggled to hide his smile. His boys – and he couldn’t help but think of them as _his boys_ – were so wonderfully exceptional.

Amidst the clanging and screeching of metal, his thoughts, as they often did, turned to Doofenshmirtz. The agency was unlikely to call him about Doofenshmirtz today. He had told Perry that he was going to be out for the next three days on a trip with Vanessa, and one day had already passed without incident.

Perry was sure that Doofenshmirtz was a bad influence, which was, okay, probably a given, being that he was self-proclaimed “evil,” but that’s not what Perry _meant_.

That was the problem with words. It was so hard to find meaning in them. He remembered the weeks spent in the agency’s training center, struggling to place any significance on the strange sounds emanating from the humans. Platypuses had their own way of communicating – in smells and soft growls and body language far more complex than anything a human could understand. Humans, as a rule, were too reliant on words.

Which made him…an outlier, he supposed.

“Don’t you ever get, y’know, _tired_ of not being able to talk?” he remembered Doofenshmirtz saying in a moment between fights. The phrasing was imprecise, clumsy, but the meaning shone through. Humans were so clever at twisting things to fit their designs.

And he was right, anyway. Perry did. And then he carefully boxed that thought up, tying it off with a little bow, and shoved it back away in the depths of his mind.

He had the strangest dreams, sometimes, where he was human. He never spoke in those dreams either, , but the feeling that welled up in his chest when he was facing off with Doofenshmirtz as nothing less than _equals_ woke him up in the middle of the night, sweating and breathing heavily.

There was that time, of course, when Doofenshmirtz turned himself into a platypus, but that was _different_ in a way Perry couldn’t describe. No matter what he thought otherwise, there was a fundamental line drawn between the body and the mind that humans had. That Perry couldn’t wrap his own head around. Everything was more…blurred in Perry, despite all his pride in his own compartmentalization.

There was a cool breeze blowing now that Phineas and Ferb had covered nearly the entire Danville area in a vast canopy of trees. A bird chirped from the leaves of the oak tree.

High above him, he heard the customary “Hey! Where’s Perry?” and suppressed a laugh, because he still hadn’t moved from his place in the backyard. There was a certain rhythm that they all danced to in those slow summer days, a steady backdrop to the music of their daily lives.

The kids swung down from the canopy.

"Oh, there you are, Perry," Phineas said, slightly confused. It was usually after their inventions had disappeared that Perry reappeared.

Another moment passed, and they swung back up into the branches with loud laughter.

So today was going to be an anomaly, then. No Doofenshmirtz, and the rhythm was already thrown out of whack. On these rare days when Perry got to just be a pet, despite his attempts to make the most of it, there was always that lingering feeling of unease, a restlessness in his limbs that put all his sensitivities on edge.

He lifted his bill; he could feel the electricity crackling in the air, though it was far more muted than if it was in the water. There was a storm coming in.

Another irregularity – the rain. Danville was so dry as to be a desert this summer; as with most other things, the weather fell victim to Phineas and Ferb's overwhelming desire to have the best summer ever – even if it meant bending a little time and space.

Even if he was most expecting it, the first drop of rain caught him by surprise, and within seconds, there was a downpour managing to slip through the intricate roof of leaves the boys had created.

Perry stood up and walked back into the house. When he shook himself inside, he took care to be wary of where all the water that flew off his fur went, making sure none of it got onto the newly cleaned carpet.

Outside, he could hear Candace screaming while Phineas, Ferb, and their friends laughed.

It was early, still; he resisted the urge to check his watch. Usually the fun ended at the very least after lunch.

He made his way to the window and looked outside. The trees were all gone, and the only cover now was the thick layers of clouds that canvassed most of the area.

“I can’t believe everything was _water-soluble_!” Phineas exclaimed as he and Ferb trudged into the living room, soaking wet. “We have got to look at the label next time.”

Perry followed them as they walked upstairs, nimbly avoiding the puddles they left behind in their wake.

After changing, Phineas plopped down in his desk chair and took out the journal he always used to document their inventions (Perry was sure that if Candace ever found out about it, she’d nearly explode of excitement). Meanwhile, Perry crawled into Ferb’s lap. Almost automatically, Ferb started petting him from head to tail.

Like that very morning, Perry closed his eyes to better feel the warmth of the hands moving through his fur while Phineas rambled on, Ferb a nearly silent conversationalist. He shifted to make himself more comfortable. 

He was almost content to listen to their conversation, but as Phineas expounded on about future improvement in design, his mind flitted back to Doofenshmirtz. 

They were so like each other, his boys and his nemesis, but the bright spark of joy that glowed in Phineas and Ferb’s spirits had been snuffed out long ago in Doofenshmirtz. Perhaps they’d be like him, in another world, with less loving parents, without a caring sister, without a platypus to protect them from harm.

Maybe the lines weren’t so stark after all. There was something that needed to be said about how his walls, so carefully constructed, were also so easily smashed. He definitely wasn’t going to be the one to say it.

“It’s only mid-afternoon,” Phineas said. “There’s still a _whole day’s_ worth of things to do.”

Ferb’s hands moved from Perry’s fur to take out their idea binder, giving Perry the opportunity to slip out onto the bedroom floor.

Perry crawled under the bed, getting dust all over himself, but finally grabbed hold of what he was looking for. He reemerged, a red rubber ball in his bill. He butted gently against Phineas’s legs.

“Hey boy,” Phineas said. “You want to play fetch?” He took the ball from Perry and turned to Ferb. “Ferb! I know what _else_ we’re gonna do today!”

Later, in the living room running back and forth with a ball, he found himself barely caring where the line was drawn, or if there was even a line. There was him, and there were his kids, and there was Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and somewhere his affection for them melted together. And he let it be.

**Author's Note:**

> so apparently this is what i'm doing now. this one's a little more shaky in terms of writing than _Not Just a River in Egypt_ but oh well.
> 
> notes:
> 
>   * The title, of course, refers to the actual Turing Test, which is basically a test to see whether or not a machine (AI) can imitate human conversation so well that it's indistinguishable from an actual human. Interpret that as you will. 
>   * This can be considered a sort of companion to Not Just a River in Egypt though the actual content is completely unrelated. It's just that both these fics are focused less on plot and more focused on thinky-things and stuff like that. 
> 

> 
> comment/kudo if you liked it!


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